Scintil Photonics, a supplier of advanced silicon photonic integrated circuits with monolithically integrated lasers and optical amplifiers, today announces it has secured €13.5M ($14.4M) in second round funding. Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) led the round, with historic shareholders Supernova Invest, Innovacom and Bpifrance, through its Digital Venture fund, reinvesting to bring the company’s total funding to €17.5M ($18.8M), to date.
Scintil Photonics’ optical communications aim to significantly enhance traditional high-speed system and chip interconnections. The company’s Augmented Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuit (IC) product is a single-chip solution consisting of active and passive components, all made entirely from standard silicon photonics processes available at CMOS commercial foundries, and where III-V optical amplifiers and lasers are integrated on the backside of advanced silicon photonic circuits. This unique all-in-one integration of amplifiers and lasers enables ultrahigh-speed communications, due to extensive parallelization and higher bit rates, e.g., from 800 G to 3,200 Gbit/sec with very compact chips.
A fabless company, Scintil Photonics will use the funds to take its industrialization program to the next level and speed up the global commercialization of its products that boost communications in data centers, High-Performance Computing (HPC) and 5G networks. Scintil Photonics’ products are unique in providing optical communication applications with higher bit rates, and scalable, cost-effective and mass-producible PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuits) solutions. This enables the multi-billion USD electronics industry to overcome the end of Moore’s Law with the integration of very high-speed optical communications.
“Scintil Photonics is delighted to welcome Robert Bosch Venture Capital, a leading global investor; this is a great opportunity for us to boost our global footprint. We are also grateful for the support of our first customers, to whom we have shipped or are currently shipping product prototypes, as well as our trusted suppliers and employees,” said Sylvie Menezo, president and CEO of Scintil Photonics. “Together, including the significant contributions in this round from our existing investors, this demonstrates the major progress we have made over the past three years in taking our disruptive photonic circuit technology to the fast-growing market segments of optical interconnects in 5G, Cloud HPC and datacom.”
“Scintil Photonics’ monolithic integration of III-V Lasers into silicon photonic chips is a key enabler for next-generation telecom, datacom and sensing,” says Ingo Ramesohl, managing director at RBVC. “The CMOS-compatible process allows for higher design freedom, lower losses and a smaller footprint at low cost. We are excited to partner with Scintil Photonics as it uniquely unlocks further miniaturization and integration of Photonic Integrated Circuits.”
“We have supported Scintil since its inception and believe that the company’s capability to integrate lasers in advanced silicon photonics is second to none currently on offer for the industry,” said Marion Aubry, investment director of the Bpifrance Digital Venture team.
“We are delighted to strengthen our continuous support to Scintil Photonics as the company reaches a new dimension. As a multistage deep tech specialist, we are impressed by its technological success and the team’s ability to transform that into a commercial success. Scintil Photonics products are tackling the energy efficiency issue in heavy loaded data center applications and 5G infrastructures. We are proud to contribute to this achievement,” said Vincent Deltrieu, partner and member of the board at Innovacom.
“Our continuous engagement with Scintil Photonics is another example of how Supernova Invest partners with game-changing deep tech start-ups to deliver to industry highly innovative and fast-to-market solutions, while reducing the cost of mass-produced fully integrated photonic circuits,” said Pierre-Emmanuel Struyven, president and managing partner at Supernova Invest.
